In Stanford’s Product Realization Lab, students discover their power to create the future.
Stanford students forge the future in the Product Realization Lab
Progress “cannot be made by the study of textbooks. Learning must be carried out in the physical and testing laboratories and the workshop.” —Guido Marx, mechanical engineering professor, ca. 1891
“The Product Realization Lab is where my dreams became tangible. My abstract notions, concrete.” —Chris Flink, ’94, MS ’05, partner, IDEO
At Stanford, making is learning. But even the most creative student needs a place to begin. Students learn precision engineering, prototyping and manufacturing in the Product Realization Lab. This welcoming maker program launched in 1891 as the Student Shops and has been a key component of Stanford’s mission from the start. Today, student-designed products of wood, metal, cloth, stone, plastic and electronics come to fruition in a “maker neighborhood” open to all Stanford students.
Shops were among the earliest buildings at Stanford, and many still fulfill their original purpose. By 1904, engineering students spent hours each week learning practical skills in a machine shop – today’s Building 530 – that for years remained part of the Product Realization Lab. Over the decades, however, students from other disciplines flocked to the shops because they wanted to make things. They wanted “to do something other than read, write and do problem sets,” one freshman explained in 1974. Their instructors, in turn, sought to provide “a liberal arts course for the non-engineer, giving … insight into the industrial culture in which we live.” The program received its current name in the 1970s and now benefits from deep synergies with the Stanford Design Program and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known familiarly as the d.school.
Increasingly, Stanford students conceive of their Product Realization Lab work not just as a personal outlet but also as a form of service. Through programs such as Sophomore College and courses such as Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, items developed in the lab warm impoverished babies, provide fresh water to disaster victims and improve the lives of zoo animals.